Despite Recent Injury Absence, Aaron Judge Retains Lead In AL MVP Race
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New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge, who is injured, takes live batting practice before a baseball game between the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays, Thursday, July 31, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa) Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. We’re over two-thirds of the way through the regular season, so it’s time to take my first looks at the Cy Young and MVP races in both leagues. Earlier this week, I looked at the AL and NL Cy Young races. Now it’s the MVP chases, starting with the AL today. If you’re new to my work, I take a slightly different approach to evaluation of current season performance. It’s a purely analytical approach, and relies on batted ball data. I simply take every batted ball hit by every qualifying MLB hitter, and calculate the damage they “should have” produced based on their exit speed/launch angle mix. That’s expressed by their Adjusted Contact Score – 100 equals league average, the higher the number the better. I then add back the Ks and BBs to determine each hitter’s “Tru” Production+, and then spread it across their plate appearance bulk to determine their “Tru” Batting Runs Above Average. I then add Fangraphs baserunning and defensive runs into the mix, resulting in “Tru” Player Runs Above Average (TPRAA). While using replacement level as a baseline typically makes sense when doing most kinds of player evaluation, I find league average to be quite useful in evaluating elite performance, i.e., for award voting, Hall of Fame-worthiness, etc.. This analysis goes through games played on July 31, and all hitters with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title as of that date were considered. That excludes the Rangers’ Corey Seager, who didn’t qualify then, but does now. He could be a…
Filed under: News - @ August 6, 2025 12:31 pm